Delay your Emails!

Have you ever accidentally forwarded a coworker or friend an e-mail and said a whole bunch of bad things about the person who originally sent the message, only to realize after pressing the send button that you pressed “Reply All”? Never get that gut wrenching feeling again with this tip!

It isn’t widely known, but Microsoft Outlook has the built-in capability of delaying all of your outgoing e-mails by a specific number of minutes, giving you that precious amount of time to open up the Outbox and press DELETE on a message that you really don’t want to send. To configure this feature takes only a few small steps:

– Find the Rules & Alerts area of Microsoft Outlook (its either in the ribbon toolbar under Rules or under Tools –> Rules and Alerts)

– Choose New Rule…

– Choose Apply rule on messages I send and press Next twice, and then Yes

– Choose defer delivery by a number of minutes, then click on a number of at the bottom, and enter the desired number.

– Click OK, Next, Next and Finish.

This rule only works when using Outlook, so don’t think it will save your bacon if you’re using Outlook Web Access, Blackberry, iPhone, etc to send mail.